Exercise Creative Thinking with Digital Art Games. Interactive visual arts games like Tate Paint can allow students to explore digital tools for artmaking with a series of creative prompts to start with such as weather, food, natural world, and experiments.

Digital Mood Board. Students can create a digital “mood board” of ideas and inspirations for personal works of art based on a common theme or idea.

Online chord looping stations and drum machines such as those found on One Motion allow students the opportunity to engage in music creation in a way that is accessible to them without a large theoretical music background. Students can use their intuition and their ears to create music in innovative ways online.

Global Art Collaboration. Facilitated by the teacher, students connect with classrooms in other parts of the world to collaborate on a digital work of art in a cloud-based digital art platform.

Students use a digital collaboration board to share their “wonderings” about the songs they are listening to in class. The teacher selects 3-4 songs from various cultures. Students add sticky notes to the collaboration board using appropriate music terminology, and share their musical preferences in a respectful manner. Students can have the ability to like or comment on each other’s posts and engage in meaningful conversations in small groups after sharing their wonderings digitally.

Collaborative boards allow students to share ideas and engage with each other via an online platform. When students are learning about the creative process of music creation and composition, students can use an online collaborative board to share lyrics and co-create a song together.

Students use digital research skills to Find Basic Information (F.B.I.) about a composer on websites such as Classic for Kids: Composer Explorer. Students learn about a specific composer, or composers from a specific geographic area, culture, genre, or time period. After gathering information, students write and produce a news program or podcast based on their research.

Students use aural skills to dictate various rhythmic, melodic and/or rhythmic-melodic patterns performed by a teacher. Students should be encouraged to perform their transcription to analyze and compare with the teacher given “prototype”. Based on trial and error, students can reflect and revise their answers many times until they are ready to finalize their student “copy”.

Students explore the connection between music and art by listening to a painting created by the artist V. Kandinsky, using Google arts and Culture: Play a Kandinsky. Students use problem solving skills to explore what Kandinsky might have heard when painting “Yellow-Red-Blue” and bring to life his theory on synesthesia and abstract art. Students explore Kandinsky’s theories on color and sound and the relationship between shapes. After exploring the Kandinsky painting, students create their own paintings in the style of Kandinsky, and explain the color and sound relationships that exist in their original work.

Students use NYU Music Experience Design Lab: Groove Pizza to create drum and unpitched instrument rhythms with math-inspired concepts. Students create grooves using math concepts like shapes, angles and patterns. The circular rhythm app allows students to begin exploration with “specials” pizza presets and add/remove “toppings” to adjust the groove. Final student creations can be shared as a link, downloaded as a .wav or .midi file, and converted to external music notation software.

Students work to create a new original composition using ‘samples'’ or snippets of other students' work. Students create a consent form to collect permission from the original creators of each sample. After choosing which instrument to perform the finished composition on, and practicing, students perform the finished product for the class. A possible extension could be to include opportunities for student collaboration in the form of revisions and edits.

Sculptures Come to Life. The teacher can facilitate a sculpture project where students make an object using paper mache, modeling clay or cardboard.

Students as Art Gallery Curators. Students can collect images of art work on sites approved by the teacher, which adhere to copyright and acceptable use guidelines. Images can be collected based on a theme identified by the student, or by the teacher based on lesson/unit objectives. Students can upload images and identifying information to a digital gallery for viewing by classmates, parents, and other community members or partners.

 Virtual Art Discussions. Students can respond to a style or collection of artwork using discussion tools in the school’s Learning Management System (LMS).

Virtual Field Trips. The teacher will facilitate a virtual field trip with a museum or using other reputable interactive online art or culture experience.

Students explore copyright and intellectual property standards as they relate to music, music technology, and digital citizenship. Students will identify and apply their knowledge of copyright law and licensure to select appropriate licenses for an original work. Students then analyze copyrighted material and understand how to obtain appropriate permission to use the material.

Digital Portfolio Slide Deck of Personal Artwork Series. Students can use digital presentation software to share the process and result of a series of original works of art.

Distance Learning with Museums. Distance learning allows students to engage with museums and galleries through virtual instruction.

Students use appropriate technology to enrich understanding of music, musicians and composers of music literature being studied. Students can create a research product such as write program notes or create a podcast.

Multimedia Artist Statements. Middle School students have learned a variety of methods for communication and when given a choice of format for personal expression can demonstrate their knowledge effectively. Students can present artist statements in the form of writing, audio recording, video recording, presentation, and more, allowing students flexibility and choice in expressing what they learned and what they did in the creation of an art project.